Elena Kagan Confirmation: Big Victory for Big Government

Elena Kagan’s confirmation represents a victory for big government and a view of the Constitution as a document whose meaning changes with the times. Based on what we learned the last few months, it is clear that Kagan holds an expansive view of federal power — refusing to identify, for example, any specific actions Congress cannot take under the Commerce Clause. She will rarely be a friend of liberty on the Court.

It is thus telling that Kagan received the fewest votes of any Democratic nominee to the Supreme Court in history, beating the record set only last year by Sonia Sotomayor. Even several senators who had voted for Sotomayor voted against Kagan, including Democrat Ben Nelson — as did Scott Brown, the darling of these high-profile Senate votes.

It was Scott Brown’s election, after all, that signaled that last year’s elections in Virginia and New Jersey were no fluke, that whether people lived in a Red, Blue, or Purple state, they were tired of bailouts, “stimulus,” re-regulation, and, especially, the government takeover of one-sixth of our economy. This anger has only grown since then, making itself felt most recently in Missouri voters’ overwhelming (71-29) rejection of the individual health insurance mandate.

“Where does the government get the constitutional authority to do this?” the cry goes up across the land. Elena Kagan won’t give a satisfactory answer but the American people are right to continue asking.